A rare example of an Inland Valley mention in science fiction came to my attention when I read Harlan Ellison’s 1976 short story “Strange Wine.” The story by Ellison, an Angeleno, involves an alien who is passing as an Earthman: a husband, father and certified public accountant in Southern California named Willis Kaw.

“In the middle of the week he asked Harvey Rothammer if he could have the day off Thursday so he could drive out to the hospital in Fontana to see his son,” one line reads.

Kaw’s boss consents grudgingly, while reminding him that tax season is coming, and Kaw is soon making the drive to see Gil, his son, who had been paralyzed in a swimming accident.

The drive does not go well.

“The car broke down 20 miles east of San Dimas, and he sat behind the wheel, in the bludgeoning heat, staring at the desert and trying to remember what the home surface of his planet looked like … He could remember only the color of the sky. It was a brilliant green, quite lovely. And things that were not birds, that skimmed instead of flying. More than that he could not remember. The car was towed back to San Dimas, but the garage had to send off to Los Angeles for the necessary parts. He left the car and took the bus back home. He did not get to see Gil that week. The repair bill was $286.45.”

Things go downhill from there for the alien from San Dimas, who thinks he’s miserable, dies and revives back on his home planet, where he learns he had it much better on Earth than he’d realized. Anyone in San Dimas, I’m sure, could have told him the same thing.

More Ellison

Soon after that, I read Ellison’s story “Neither Your Jenny Nor Mine,” from 1964, and it had another Inland Valley shout-out.

The story, which is fiction rather than science fiction, is about an unplanned pregnancy in Hollywood. The narrator, a friend of the woman, fails at his first attempt to get a referral to an illegal abortionist from among his acquaintances but keeps trying:

“Then I tried Van Jessup, a character actor who seemed to know everyone. He knew no one. Then I tried a TV director I’d played gin with a few times, and he said he’d get back to me. Then I tried a freako who made the Sunset Strip scene, and she asked a couple of guarded questions and said she’d get back to me. Then I called a relative in Pomona and she giggled outrageously, and said I should get back to her.”

That does sound like Pomona.

Out of the past

Pomona figured into a 1959 hoax that apparently led to the burglary of actor Hugh O’Brien’s L.A. home. An Associated Press story of April 27, 1959, turned up by my colleague Joe Blackstock, gave the details.

The “houseboy” for O’Brien, who was playing Wyatt Earp on TV at the time, said he got a call from a man purporting to be “Sgt. Henderson” of the Pomona police, summoning him to Pomona. As the servant, Stig Hoglund, explained it later, “Henderson” said there was a traffic warrant for his arrest, “and if I didn’t come to Pomona right away there would be trouble.”

Not wanting trouble, Hoglund left O’Brien’s Benedict Canyon home unattended to head to Pomona, where police told him there was no such warrant. When he returned home, Hoglund found two automatic pistols missing.

The colorful first lines of the AP’s story:

“Someone stole Wyatt Earp’s guns. It looks as if the scheming hombre who did it tricked the Marshal’s right-hand man into doing a heap of ridin’ for nothin’.”

Also missing, according to the AP: “20 sportshirts, 12 pairs of slacks, five sport jackets, seven sweaters, a radio, assorted jewelry and whisky.”

I have no idea if the thief was ever caught, although my guess is that he used his ill-gotten gains to open a men’s clothing store.

‘Sing, You Sinners’

A Bing Crosby musical comedy was filmed in large part in Pomona, according to an April 8, 1938, Progress-Bulletin article, likewise found by Blackstock and kindly handed over for my use.

Two weeks of filming took place at a service station at Second and Towne and other locales in and around the city, with subsequent filming slated for the fairgrounds. (Crosby’s character works at a gas station, is fired for trading gas for rummage items, then wins enough money at a racetrack to buy a racehorse.)

Crosby and co-stars Donald O’Connor and Erin Drew, as well as the crew, lodged at the Hotel Mayfair downtown.

As no official record has been found of celebrities who stayed at the Mayfair, which was reopened in 2012 as apartments, someone please make a note of this!

Since 1997, David Allen has been taking up valuable newsprint and pixels at the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, where he is a columnist and blogger (insidesocal.com/davidallen). Among his specialties: city council meetings, arts and culture, people, places, local history, dining and a log in a field that resembled the Loch Ness monster. The Illinois native has spent his newspaper career in California, starting in 1987 at the Santa Rosa News-Herald and continuing at the Rohnert Park-Cotati Clarion, Petaluma Argus-Courier and Victor Valley Daily Press. A resident of Claremont who roots for the St. Louis Cardinals and knows far too much about Marvel Comics, the Kinks and Frank Zappa's Inland Valley years, he is the author of two collections of columns: "Pomona A to Z" and "Getting Started." Follow David Allen @davidallen909

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